Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Space Tethers, Space Transportation, Technology on Dec 3rd, 2009
Anyone who’s interested in going to the Moon ought to take a serious look at the technology of momentum-exchange tethers. My own interest began back in 1998, when as a summer intern on the X-33 program at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, I spent time after work trying to come up with a new lunar [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Space Transportation, Thrust Augmented Nozzles on Dec 2nd, 2009
I want to clean out some of the Skribit suggestions that I’ve been neglecting for a while. Some of these may end up somewhat brief, but I wanted to at least try to be responsive.
Drop Tanks to Enable SSTO?
I don’t like drop tanks. While they do definitely make the rest of the SSTO [...]
Posted in Space Transportation, Technology on Dec 2nd, 2009
Kirk sent me the link to these yesterday, but I didn’t have time to blog them yet. These should hopefully give you a better idea of what we’re talking about. If you have time, the other videos on his youtube channel are pretty interesting as well (though I imagine some of them will be talked [...]
Posted in Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, Technology, Tuggery on Nov 18th, 2009
Earlier this summer, I stumbled on a fascinating paper while trying to find some quotes for my Space 2009 Propellant Depot paper. The paper I found, Boom Rendezvous Alternative Docking Approach, written by Joseph Bonnometti of MSFC, discussed an interesting alternative to the standard method of bringing spacecraft together. It also provided an interesting insight [...]
Posted in Administrivia, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, Technology on Nov 3rd, 2009
Ok, between the trip to DC for the awards ceremony on Thursday, and taking all of next week off for a long-needed vacation, I’m not quite out of the woods yet. But after that I want to get back into blogging. And I have a few topics I’d like to write about, but [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, Propellant Depots, RLV Markets, Space Transportation on Jul 30th, 2009
In light of how well today went at the Augustine Committee, I felt that it would be worthwhile to post the propellant depot white paper that a group of us submitted last week. I was originally planning a much longer paper, trying to make the case that depots were technologically mature enough to be [...]
Posted in COTS, Commercial Space, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, International Space Competition, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Policy, Space Transportation, Technology on Jul 30th, 2009
Or at least that’s how Stephen Flemming put it on Twitter regarding Jeff Greason’s presentation at the Augustine Committee meeting today in Florida. To be fair, the rest of the subgroup also did an amazing job, especially Chris Chyba’s wrapup near the the end, where he made the case forcefully that becoming a spacefaring [...]
Posted in Space Transportation, Technology, Tuggery on Jul 6th, 2009
This is just a short one that someone pointed out to me over the weekend. For spacecraft that have to do their own rendezvous and docking with say a space station or depot, you need an RCS capable of not just holding a stable attitude, but also providing translational control in all three axes. Ie [...]
Posted in Bigelow Aerospace, Commercial Space, ESAS, Launch Vehicles, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, MSS, NASA, Propellant Depots, Space Transportation, SpaceX on Jun 28th, 2009
Ok, two weeks ago, I mentioned that the “pre-depot” dual EELV launch concept my friend had passed to me could be adapted to do manned lunar missions. Lunar missions are a lot easier to close if you assume a depot in LEO (and even easier if there’s also a small depot at L2). But it [...]
Posted in ESAS, NASA, Space Transportation on Jun 27th, 2009
A few years ago, I asked the question of “how many crew do you really need for a lunar program?“ The conclusion was that if you could reduce the crew requirements (at least initially), it might allow for a much more capable, affordable, and flexible architecture. And you’d eventually be back up to 4 or [...]